The Great Debate by Yuval Levin

The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the
Birth of Right and Left by Yuval
Levin. Basic Books, 275 pages, $27.99.

In the mid-17th century,
to think for oneself and determine one's fate were the prerogatives of a tiny
hereditary elite. The rest of humanity did not even aspire to them. By the
mid-19th century, the aspiration, at least, was near-universal in
Europe and North America, and beginning to be felt elsewhere; and reality had
begun, gradually, fitfully, and still incompletely, to shift in that direction
everywhere. The arc of history had been bent toward democracy.

What accomplished that most momentous
of alterations was, of course, the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was not a
doctrine, or a set of doctrines; it was an attitude. The best definition
remains Kant's in his essay "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?"
(1784):

Enlightenment
is humankind's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity. ... This immaturity is
self-imposed when its cause lies not in a lack of understanding but in a lack
of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. "Sapere aude! Have the courage to use
your own understanding!" - that is the motto of enlightenment.

Or, as the New Left of the 1960s and 70s put it: "Question authority!"

Why, one may ask, did it take courage
in the late 18th century to use one's own understanding? Because
from time immemorial, virtually everywhere, the prevailing structures of power
and privilege had been arbitrary and patently unjust. The beneficiaries of this
state of affairs discouraged critical reflection on it, by indoctrination and
by the threat of temporal and eternal punishment. Where authority has no justification,
to ask for one is sedition.

Some, probably most, of those who
opposed self-determination cared only about preserving their privileges. But
others have always believed, more or less sincerely, that freedom is too great
a burden for ordinary people and that governing is beyond their capacity. Even
to choose their rulers or their form of government is too much for them. On
these subjects they must not, for their own good, "use their understanding
without guidance" from wiser others.

The revolutions in America and France
were the first large-scale assertions of popular sovereignty, and they gave
rise to a great debate on the question of self-determination. It was a somewhat
lopsided debate; the opponents of popular sovereignty mainly replied with force
rather than with arguments. Only one thinker of stature tried to rebut the
advocates of self-determination (though he too called for forcibly suppressing
them): Edmund Burke. In The Great Debate,
Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs
and a frequent contributor to the Weekly
Standard and National Review,
reconstructs the supreme agon of that controversy, Burke's angry Reflections on the Revolution in France
and Thomas Paine's incandescent reply, The
Rights of Man.

Burke was Anglo-Irish, the private
secretary (we would now say chief of staff) of a leading Whig politician, and
eventually a member of Parliament. The Whigs favored limiting the prerogatives
of royalty in favor of those of aristocracy. They were (or claimed to be)
something of a "good government" party, not so egregiously corrupt, cruel, or
tyrannical as the Tories; and Burke made a reputation early on as an opponent
of some of the more flagrant abuses of the time, including the criminal justice
system, religious discrimination, the administration of Ireland, and the
plundering of the colonies, particularly India and America.

But as a dangerous radical observed
in our own time, it is one thing to give food to the poor and quite another
thing to ask why the poor have no food. Burke was willing to acknowledge abuses
and mitigate them, but he rejected all talk of structural injustice, equal
rights, or radical reform. Paine (and Burke's other contemporary critics,
Joseph Priestley, Mary Wollstonecraft, James Macintosh, and William Godwin) scoffed
that Burke's defense of the status quo (the "British constitution," he called
it reverently) was a tissue of fallacies, sophistries, and evasions,
camouflaged by gorgeous rhetoric. This might have been posterity's verdict as
well, if the French Revolution had turned out differently. But the Terror and
Napoleon's dictatorship appeared to vindicate Burke. An alliance of
counter-revolutionary powers, led (as Burke had urged) by England, defeated
France militarily, and the controversy subsided. In the latter half of the 20th
century, the Cold War roused American conservatism from its long intellectual
slumber. Interest in Burke revived. The Great Debate is still hardly a burning,
or even a smoldering, issue for most 21st-century Americans. But
Levin's good-tempered, even-handed book will no doubt persuade many readers of
its continuing relevance.

"Burke and Paine," Levin writes,
"each offer a coherent and, for the most part, internally consistent case about
the character of society and politics." He summarizes their opposing cases very
handily:

Burke's objection to total revolution draws on his
horror at the prospect of abandoning all that has been arduously gained over
centuries of slow, incremental reform and improvement. He sees it as a betrayal
of the trust of past generations and of the obligation to future ones. Paine's
objection to such plodding reform, meanwhile, is that it gives credence to
despotism and is motivated more by the desire to sustain inequity than to
address injustice.

Burke believes that human nature and the rest of
nature make themselves known in politics through long experience, that human
beings are born into a web of obligations, and that the social problems we
confront do not lend themselves to detached scientific analysis. For all these
reasons, he believes that improvements in politics must be achieved by
cumulative reform - by building on success to address failure and by containing
the effects of innovation within a broader context of continuity.

Paine, on the other hand, believes that nature reveals
itself in the form of abstract principles discovered by rational analysis, that
human beings are entitled to choose their government freely, that government in
turn exists to protect their other choices, and that reason can help people see
beyond the superstitions that have long sustained unjust regimes. For all these
reasons, he believes that improvements in politics must be achieved by
thoroughgoing revolution - by throwing off the accumulated burdens of the past
and starting fresh and properly.

This sounds plausible enough. It is
certainly the standard account of the Great Debate. But look at these
alternatives a little more closely. On the one hand, Paine champions "rational
analysis"; on the other, Burke insists that we learn from "long experience."
Paine declares that "human beings are entitled to choose their government
freely"; Burke counters that "human beings are born into a web of obligations."
Paine advocates "throwing off the accumulated burdens of the past"; Burke
emphasizes "building on success to address failure."

In each case, the second half of the
antithesis is supposed to be incompatible with the first. But in each case, it
is no such thing. Every judgment involves both
rational analysis and the lessons of experience. Why would those who are born
into a web of obligations (i.e., everyone) not be entitled to choose their
government freely? Why is it impossible to distinguish between past failures
and past successes, rejecting the former and building on the latter? Burke's
polemical method consists of attributing extreme and implausible positions to
his ideological opponents and then refuting them with many expressions of
outraged common sense. Enlightenment "radicalism" simply proposed that no
tradition or institution be exempt from criticism and that all men and women
should have a fair chance to shape the common life. For Burke, this was sheer
horror, the world turned upside down. He could not imagine that most human
beings would ever attain maturity.

The profound philosophical differences
Levin attributes to Burke and Paine are actually superficial ones. Whether
reform should be partial or radical, gradual or rapid; whether our ancestors
were wise or foolish and the laws they bequeathed us are just or unjust; whether
governing well is easy or difficult and most people will be capable of or
interested in taking part in it; whether we are influenced chiefly by reasons
or passions, abstractions or facts, inherited loyalties or ethical reflection -
are all beside the main point at issue between Burke and Paine. The main point
is: who decides? Shall ordinary men and women be empowered? Does each of us get
an equal vote and a chance to be heard? Paine says yes; Burke tries desperately
to confuse matters, setting off huge smoke-bombs of rhetorical obfuscation,
proceeding from trivially obvious premises to outlandish conclusions by way of
grandiloquent non sequiturs. Because an institution or practice has lasted a
long time, Burke argues, it deserves to continue. Because none of us can be
perfectly objective or impartial, we cannot reason together about fundamentals.
Wanting to discuss everything is the same as wanting to abolish everything.
Spreading new ideas by persuasion is no different from imposing them by armed
conquest. Because variety is a good thing, vast inequalities of wealth and
status are desirable. Because inherited privilege bestows special opportunities
to become wise and public-spirited, the rest of us can safely assume that the
privileged are wise and public-spirited. Because some aspects of our identity
are not chosen but given at birth, it follows that, as Jefferson put it with
scathing sarcasm, "the mass of mankind have ... been born with saddles on their
backs, [and] a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately,
by the grace of God." Stripped of Burkean rodomontade, all these arguments are
preposterous. Dressed in it, they have bedazzled generations of conservatives,
including Levin.

In the book's concluding chapter,
Levin argues, again plausibly enough, for the enduring relevance of the Great
Debate. Nowadays, he observes, we all believe, as the Founding Fathers did, in
liberty, equality, and innovation. But we also believe, as they did, in order,
continuity, and compromise. We believe in strong government but also in limited
government, in expertise but also in tradition. We are all liberals, he maintains,
though some of us are progressive, Paine-ite liberals and others are
conservative, Burkean liberals.

It is a neat, ingenious, even
magnanimous argument. Though he himself is a down-the-line Republican, Levin seems
genuinely concerned to avoid the appearance of partisanship - he goes so far as
to refrain from so much as naming the two major present-day political parties.
He sincerely believes that a better appreciation of intellectual history will
introduce more comity into contemporary American politics.

But just as Levin exaggerates the
importance of philosophical differences in the Great Debate, he exaggerates the
importance of the Great Debate to contemporary politics. Today, at any rate,
the differences between left and right are not chiefly philosophical; they are
cruder, more elemental than that. America is a plutocracy. The degree to which
popular preferences influence government policy is minimal. (Recently a
Princeton political scientist estimated that the opinions of the bottom 70
percent of the income scale exercise no influence on policy, and the next 29
percent not much. That sounds about right.) Progressive vs. conservative is one
way of describing the difference between the two major parties, but moderate
plutocrats vs. extreme plutocrats is far more accurate. What divides the 1
percent from the 99 percent is not a different brand of liberalism.

In reality, the Great Debate ended
not long after it began. Within forty years, the Reform Act expanded the
suffrage in England. Within a century, adult male suffrage was universal in
Europe. Within two centuries, adult suffrage was universal. As a source of
political legitimacy, heredity now ranks somewhere below astrology. The
principle of one person/one vote (in practice, alas, one dollar or Euro or ruble/one
vote) is as widely accepted as the right to choose one's profession or religion
or mate. As for prescription, prejudice, inherited status, and the rest of
Burke's fancied "British constitution" - gone and good riddance.

Before the Enlightenment - before
even Burke's Glorious (not all that
glorious) Revolution - the democratic truths that Paine and others vindicated
against Burke were memorably asserted by the humble against the haughty. In the
Putney Debates of 1647, some of Cromwell's soldiers perceived that their betrayal
by the country's large landowners was imminent and spoke out, no less
eloquently than Burke. Edward Sexby: "There are many thousands of us soldiers
that have ventured our lives ... But it seems now that except a man hath a fixed
estate in this kingdom, he hath no right in it. I wonder that we were so much
deceived." John Wildman: "It is the end of Parliament to legislate according to
the just ends of government, not simply to maintain what is already
established. Every person in England hath as clear a right to elect his
Representative as the greatest person in England ... [for] all government is in
the free choice of the people." Thomas Rainborough: "The poorest he that is in
England hath a live to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, I think
it's clear that every man that is to live under a Government ought first by his
own consent to put himself under that Government; and I do think that the
poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that Government
that he hath not had a voice to put himself under. ... I should doubt whether he
was an Englishman or no who should doubt of these things."

For my part, I should doubt whether
she was a liberal who doubted these things.